Greetings,

In the middle of a development cycle before making a mirror, a WD5000AAKS drive became unrecognized. I ordered a donor drive and performed the following experiments:

Patient drive: P/N WD5000AAKS-00TMA0 Date: 28 Dec 2006 DCM: HBRCNV2AB
Donor drive: P/N WD5000AAKS-75YGA0 Date: 06 Apr 2008 DCM: HHRNHT2CHB

1. tested donor drive: OK (drive recognized, filesystems ok)
2. replaced PCB on patient drive with one from donor drive: no go (patient drive not recognized)
3. replaced PCB on donor drive with one from patient drive: no go (donor drive not recognized)
4. removed head stack from donor drive and replaced back into donor drive and tested: OK (drive recognized, filesystems ok)
5. replaced head stack from patient drive with one from donor drive: no go (drive not recognized)
(behavior of patient changed from three full passes and spin down to multiple seeks and much longer time before spin down)

Is my donor drive too different (PCB firmware, drive calibration data)?

Will a firmware flash possibly help? Which firmware flash tool to use (freely available)?

All visible platter surfaces appear undamaged, head loading is fine, no bad noises.

All replies appreciated.

Mine is not to reason why, but does the patient HDD still have the donor heads? If so, have you tried both the donor PCB and the donor heads together on the patient HDD?

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

Donor heads do not match: patient / donor not same family (Tornado, Tornado 2R); DCM way off, date difference is high; ... Drive might also have platter damage on the bottom. Firmware flash will not help and there are no free tools for that either (to patch adaptives). You can use "free" tools to read/write ROM when you have unsoldered it. How did you check for platter damage and how did you check the heads? You swapped the heads in a cleanroom / lab? Have you checked air filter?

If your data is important, stop with these "experiments" and contact a DR professional.

Best regards,

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030 Datenrettung Berlin GmbH (Germany)
HDD, SSD, NAS, RAID Datenrettung - 030-datenrettung.de

Hi ,

it's look for me donor not compatible ...

goodluck

It could be alignment issue as well on these drives after top cover is opened am not quite sure, just a thought.

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Data Recovery Pakistan

The fact that the OP even attempted swapping heads from a drive so far off shows how unqualified he is to handle it.

If your data is important, stop messing around and get it to a professional. Hopefully you haven't ruined any chance of recovery already.

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Data Medics - Hard Drive, SSD, and RAID Data Recovery Service Company

What indicated the heads were bad originally?

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Hard Disk Drive (HDD), Solid State Drive (SSD, SATA, NVMe, etc), USB Flash Drive and RAID Data Recovery Specialist in Massachusetts